An important question for research on reading across the lifespan concerns whether mechanisms of cognitive processing undergo only quantitative changes or also qualitative changes with aging. To process written language effectively, readers use their existing knowledge to make predictive inferences about linguistic information. Quite often this will facilitate the processing of newly acquired information but will sometimes incur a processing cost due to predictive error. As Older adults appear to rely more heavily on lexical prediction during reading (Zhao et al., 2019, 2021). However, it is currently unknown whether, like young adults, they experience a processing cost due to predictive error, and whether the magnitude of this cost differs across age adult groups. Accordingly, the present research aims to understand the processing consequence of predictive error in both young and older adults, using methods that can shed light on both the behavioral and neural bases of these effects. This will be achieved using novel co-registration methods that synchronize the recording of electroencephalographic (EEG) signals with eye movements, so that behavioral and neural indices of language processing can be acquired simultaneously, in real-time, during natural reading. In particular, this approach will enable the analysis of fixated-related potentials (FRPs), which are averaged EEG waveforms time-locked to a fixation on a target word in a sentence during normal reading.
Study 1 will manipulate whether a target word is predictable from the prior sentence context, using contexts in which the target word is predictable, ones in which it is unpredictable, and neutral contexts containing an unpredictable word. Crucially, comparisons of an unpredictable word in neutral compared to constraining contexts will provide a measure of prediction error, which is the cost incurred when the target word is unpredicted in a constraining context. The study will investigate the behavioral and neural correlates of this prediction error using a combination of eye movement measures and FRPs for target words. Moreover, by investigating age differences in these effects (i.e., for young compared to older adults) the study will reveal whether this prediction error differs across adult age groups.
Study 2 will test these effects further by examining both the contribution to the prediction error cost of parafoveal information availability and individual differences in visual, cognitive and linguistic abilities. To examine the contribution of these individual differences, we will comprehensively assess the visual, cognitive and linguistic abilities of young and older adult participants prior their taking part in experiments. We will obtain information about participants' educational background, vocabulary knowledge and recent reading experience to match participants in terms of formal educational experience and to obtain indices of linguistic experience. In addition, we will assess processing speed, working memory, and inhibition as measures of cognitive capabilities. The data obtained will be used for the linear mixed-effects modelling of Study 3. Experiment 1 will use the boundary paradigm to investigate age differences in the prediction error cost when parafoveal information is available or not. The aim of this experiment is to establish whether limiting the availability of parafoveal information about an upcoming word differentially impacts lexical prediction by young and older adults. Experiment 2 will use masking text paradigm to investigate the aging effects on prediction error cost under high or low working memory load conditions. The aim of this experiment is to explore the effect of working memory load on prediction processing mechanism of young and older readers. Finally, in Experiment 3, the older adult participants will be divided into good and poor reading skill groups to examine whether there is a difference in the prediction error cost for older participants with good and poor reading skills as compared to skilled young adult readers. This will reveal how reading skills mediates predictive processing by older adults.
Study 3 will use linear mixed-effects modelling and data-mining methods. All relevant factors will be included in the model analysis as covariates to investigate their effects on the prediction processing of older readers. Moreover, survival analysis and distribution analysis will be adopted to investigate the time course and individual differences of the above-mentioned effects (using data from Study 1 and 2).
The findings from these studies will provide important insights into the nature of effects of cognitive aging and individual differences in visual, cognitive and linguistic abilities on neural and cognitive indices of word prediction in reading, and will form the basis for future models of these effects in Chinese reading. Moreover, the findings will shed light on the contribution of parafoveal processing, memory load, and reading skill on the predictive abilities of older adult readers.

This project addresses the limitation of traditional literature on helping decision-making, which excessively focuses on transient "helping behavior." This project considers helping decision-making in the workplace as a social venture investment decision process, which involves a series of steps corresponding to dynamic psychological contracts. This includes preparation, strategic conception, and follow-up adjustment when the help giver and the help seeker sign contracts for help in the workplace. Simultaneously, a crucial task of managers is to create an environment that promotes employees' mutual help in the organization. Furthermore, the project proposes that human resource management practice can create and maintain an appropriate investment environment within the organization. This environment can boost social venture investment decision among staff and encourage them to accept social investment risk in workplace helping decision-making.
Based on the above ideas, this project will be conducted in two parts, comprising of four studies. In the first part, based on the dynamic psychological contract theory, the interview and case study methods will be used to develop the process model of workplace helping decision-making (Study 1). The workplace helping decision-making process proposedly includes six steps: heeding the dilemma of the help seeker, explaining the help seekers' dilemma, confirming whether and how much responsibility individuals have to assist the help seeker, formulating strategies to assist the help seeker, implementing helping behavior, and adjusting further helping decisions based on the reflection of previous helping results. This project then focus on the last step, which is the main difference between our workplace helping decision-making model and those of previous research. This project will use a daily-diary survey to explore how help givers would reflect the feedback of help seekers and adjust further help based on their reflection (Study 2). In the second part, based on the above proposed six-step model of helping decision-making in the workplace, human resource management practice is regarded as an important environmental factor that influences individuals to conduct social venture investments, such as helping decision-making in the workplace. Using the multi-wave survey method, this project focuses on the influential mechanism of two key variables of human resource management practice on helping decision-making in the workplace: job design (Study 3) and salary management (Study 4). Specifically, Study 3 examines the mediating role of work engagement between job characteristics and workplace helping decision-making, and the moderating mechanism of task interdependence on this mediating process. Study 4 explores the mediating role of team identity between team performance payment and workplace helping decision-making, and the moderating mechanism of organizational identity on the mediating role of team identity.
Through the above four studies, this project will make the following theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, from the dynamic psychological contract perspective, this project regards the workplace helping decision-making process as a social venture investment decision process, thus providing a new theoretical perspective for literatures in the field of help. Thus, this project addresses the limitation of previous literatures focusing on "helping behavior," which is a transient behavior, and instead regards help in the workplace as a decision-making process. Therefore, future researchers could further explore this process and find more effective ways to encourage workplace helping behavior. Moreover, previous studies conventionally applied the psychological contract theory to explain the relationship between organizations and employees. This project is the first to adopt the psychological contract theory to elucidate the relationship between employees in the workplace, thus expanding the boundaries of the psychological contract theory. Regarding practice, this project examines the antecedents of the decision-making process of help in the workplace from different modules of human resource management, which can guide the practice of human resource management and promote employees' mutually helping behavior.

Individual decisions in the field of moral judgement are often related to "hurting or sacrificing the innocent" and "tolerating immoral behaviors." Previous studies have shown that when presented with the moral decision-making situation within a foreign language context, the individuals will show a stronger utilitarian and a more tolerant moral evaluation tendency compared with the same situation within the native language context. This phenomenon is defined as the moral foreign language effect. The influence of the language context on the moral judgement has been investigated by numerous studies. However, the results were far from consistent. To this end, we used meta-analysis to explore the effect of the language type (native language vs. foreign language) on the individuals' utilitarian tendency in moral judgments, and we analyzed several moderating variables.
A total of 19 papers were retrieved from literature, with 46 independent samples, 97 effect sizes and 9672 participants that met the inclusion criteria of the meta-analysis. First, we analyzed the effect of the language type (native language vs. foreign language) on the utilitarian tendency in moral judgments using the ‘metafor' R package. Next, the potential moderation effects of several factors were examined, including the moral dilemmas story type (personal moral dilemmas vs. impersonal moral dilemmas vs. daily moral evaluation situations), sex, scoring method (two-point scoring vs. multi-point scoring) and language family type (same vs. different). In addition, we used Bayesian factor estimation for secondary exploration of the results that had a nonsignificant moderating effect.
Our meta-analysis resulted in the following findings. First, the main effect test indicated that the language type has a significant effect on the utilitarian tendency in moral judgment, with a small but stable moral foreign language effect (g = 0.23). Second, the moderation analysis indicated that the moral foreign language effect was influenced by the story type; there was a small but stable effect of the language type for personal moral dilemmas (g = 0.32), but not for impersonal moral dilemmas (g = 0.11) or daily moral evaluation situations (g = 0.12). The foreign language effect under impersonal moral dilemmas was affected by the scoring method; a significant effect was found under multi-point scoring (g = 0.27), but not under two-point scoring (g = 0.05). On the other hand, there was no significant moderating effect for the sex or language family type. In addition, Bayesian analysis showed only moderate evidence for the absence of moderating effect regarding the factors of sex, scoring methods and language family type. The stability of these conclusions can be further verified in future research.
In summary, this study used meta-analysis to systematically explore the robustness and influencing factors of foreign language effects in moral judgment and answered the disputes about the stability of the moral foreign language effect. The results showed a small but relatively stable effect of the language type on the utilitarian orientation in moral judgment. We analyzed the moderating effects of multiple variables, including variables that have not been well-considered in previous studies, such as the scoring methods (two-point scoring vs. multi-point scoring). Our work did not only find the moderating effect of the type of moral dilemmas, but it also revealed the potential impact of the scoring method on the effect size. This provides certain enlightenment and guidance for future empirical studies when selecting the experimental materials and statistical methods. Finally, we used a variety of data processing methods to increase the robustness of the results. For example, robust variance estimation (RVE) was used to control the correlations between dependent effect sizes and compare our results with those of traditional meta-analysis, so as to understand how the results of the meta-analysis are influenced by the correlations between multiple dependent effect sizes.

Spatial-numerical associations (SNAs), showing that small numbers have stronger associations with left space and large numbers have stronger associations with right space, are a hot topic in the field of cognitive psychology. An important index to explore SNAs is the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect (i.e., faster responses to small numbers using left effectors, and the inverse for large numbers), which provides strong evidence for the existence of SNAs. Previous studies have verified the universality of the SNARC effect. This effect could be observed across a wide range of numbers, diversified materials, different sensory channels, different ways participants react, and various reaction indexes. Importantly, the SNARC effect is also flexible in direction and the processing stage at which it occurs. First, the direction of the SNARC effect is flexible. Previous studies showed that the direction of the SNARC effect could be influenced by different reading habits (e.g., left-to-right or right-to-left), varying ranges of numbers (e.g., 1~9, 0~4, and 4~9), different representations (e.g., ruler or alarm clock), serial position in working memory, and reference numbers for comparison. The mental number line, working memory account and other theories have been proposed to explain the directional flexibility of the SNARC effect. Second, the processing stage in which the SNARC effect occurs is flexible. Researchers have tried to determine the processing stage in which the SNARC effect occurs from three perspectives: the relationship between the SNARC effect and other effects occurring at different stages (e.g., the Simon effect, Stroop effect, numerical distance effect, and switch cost), changes in the SNARC effect in different response effectors (e.g., hand response and eye movement), and the event-related potentials (ERPs) components induced by the SNARC effect. Three views of the processing stage in which the SNARC effect occurs have been proposed, but the conclusions are still discordant. The first view supports that the SNARC effect occurs at the semantic representation stage, the second view supports that it occurs at the response selection stage, and some recent studies have proposed a third view that the SNARC effect occurs flexibly at both stages. This dispute may be caused by the following four reasons: (1) disparities in the comprehension of additive-factor logic, which led to indirect inference; (2) observation from a single point, which led to indirect inference; (3) different types of Simon effects were adopted as the measure index, which led to different results; and (4) different tasks were adopted, which led to different results. Combining the above reasons, a new two-stage processing (spatial representation of magnitude, spatial representation to response selection) model was proposed. This model distinguished the different processing pathways of magnitude information in the magnitude comparison task (task-relevant) and in the parity judgment task (task-irrelevant). Also, it was proposed that different interference factors acting on the two stages might be the core reason for the flexibility of the SNARC effect. This model covered and explained the flexible variation in the SNARC effect observed in most previous studies. Future research could focus on comparisons of different tasks and the adoption of various interference factors to verify the two-stage processing model and combine cognitive neuroscience technologies to further elucidate the neural mechanism underlying the flexibility of SNAs.

Reading and theory of mind (ToM) both play important roles in the development of children. A large number of previous studies reveal that reading and ToM may have two-way promotion effects. On the one hand, shared reading with parents or teachers enables children to initiate joint attention. In this process, children and storytellers use a lot of terms of mental state to communicate with each other, and they can also construct an alternative social situation through social imagination and perspective-taking ability. In daily life, children will also understand stories by guessing and inferring the thoughts, intentions, desires and emotions of the characters through simulating real social activity, which promotes the development of children's ToM. On the other hand, numerous studies have shown that ToM can also promote the development of children's reading ability in a lot of aspects. For example, in the process of reading, ToM can help children to improve their abilities to establish a macro view of reading, use metacognitive reading strategies, construct story situation models, and even promote their micro ability to understand specific phrases, sentences, discourses and multi-text materials. What's more, ToM may increase the reader's ability to express and monitor the characters' thoughts and emotions during the reading process. When readers can understand and express the mental states and emotions of the characters in the story, it indicates that they may have made some inferences and judgments about the mental states which are unclearly stated in the story. In this case, readers can understand the story more easily and are more likely to find the fun of reading, which may trigger more reading behaviors, thus leading to more frequent use of ToM and promote its development. Both reading and ToM show a good trend of mutual promotion and common development. In addition to behavioral research, further neurophysiological evidence shows that there is some overlap between the neural activity of reading and ToM. In the reading process, the default network shows strong activation. As the main support network for social cognition, default network also plays an important role in the development of ToM. In addition, the mirror nervous system contributes to the interaction between reading and ToM as well. The mirror nervous system enables individuals to understand or experience the actions, thoughts, intentions, and feelings of others. In addition, reading literary works, especially literary novels, can improve the individual's ToM by enhancing the mirror nervous system. Both behavioral and brain mechanism studies support that there may be a potential two-way promoting relationship between reading and ToM. In the future, it is necessary to pay more attention to the potential relationship between ToM and reading. Further in-depth and long-term longitudinal follow-up studies are needed to provide abundant empirical evidence for the relationship between reading and ToM. In addition, more attention should be paid to the development of ToM in school education and its positive influence on children's self-protection and compliance with moral norms. In line with the development of science and technology, it is also necessary to pay more attention to the influence of multimedia reading on children's ToM. Besides, in daily home reading or school teaching, parents and teachers should make efforts to increase intervention training to improve children's ToM and reading comprehension ability. For example, feedback training in reading is beneficial to promote children's perspective-taking and ToM, which includes emboldening children to talk deeply about their mental states and desires, asking children more questions, and encouraging children to play pretend games. All of these interventions may, to varying degrees, promote children to think about different views and mental states in various ways during reading process.

Previous studies based on attachment theory have proved the influence of attachment on emotion regulation. These influences can be manifested in many aspects, such as the choice of emotion regulation strategies, the effect of emotion regulation, and some cognitive processing related to emotion regulation. However, these studies ignore the complexity and diversity of emotion regulation as a process, and therefore cannot answer how attachment can affect emotion regulation. The extended process model divides emotion regulation into three stages, and clearly describes the process of emotion regulation and the relationship between various factors in the process. Combining the extended process model and the attachment theory to look back to previous studies is helpful to find out the relationship among these studies and expand new research directions. From the perspective of the extended process model, it can be found that there are individual differences related to attachment in all the three stages of emotional regulation. Specifically, in the recognition stage, the influence of attachment on emotion regulation is mainly reflected in the cognitive processing related to emotions. Both higher attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance are related to lower emotion recognition ability. At the same time, higher attachment avoidance is related to lower emotion recognition ability, and higher attachment anxiety is related to lower emotion regulation self-efficacy. In the selection stage, individuals with different attachment styles have different preferences for the choice of emotion regulation strategies. Most studies have found that individuals with secure attachment prefer to use highly adaptable and efficient strategies (such as cognitive reappraisal), and individuals with insecure attachment styles prefer to use strategies which are less adaptable and efficient(such as hypo-regulation or hyper-regulation). In the implementation stage, most studies have found that both attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance are significantly positively correlated with emotion regulation difficulties or disorders, but in some studies, high attachment avoidance individuals may not have problem with emotion regulation. In general, many factors are influenced by attachment in the process of emotion regulation, and the extended process model provides a theoretical framework for describing the sequence and causal relationship between these factors. However, there are still many key issues that have not yet been resolved. Future research can be expanded from the following aspects: The influence of attachment on emotional regulation should be explored while paying attention to the impact of environmental factors; New experimental paradigms need to be designed to confirm the continuity of the three stages and explore the reasons why attachment could affect emotional regulation. It is necessary to explore the influence of attachment on the emotion regulation flexibility. In addition, future intervention studies should design more targeted interventions to improve the emotion regulation of insecurely attached individuals.

Disgust, as an important basic emotion, is commonly recognized as a toxin (pathogens) avoidance mechanism to protect individuals from diseases, and has far-reaching evolutionary implications and specific physiological mechanisms. Hormones are chemical messengers synthesized and secreted by endocrine cells, which affect the physiological activities of individuals by regulating the metabolism of various tissue cells. A large number of studies have found that the generation and expression of disgust involve many different hormones, including oxytocin, progesterone, estrogens, testosterone, corticosteroids, arginine-vasopressin, etc. These various systems of neuroendocrine regulations make individuals rapidly evaluate and integrate the information related to toxins and pathogen cues, and thus producing appropriate disgust and avoidance behaviors. In the current researches, oxytocin, progesterone and estrogens are the most widely studied hormones in the field of disgust. Based on animal and human researches, this article reviews and summarizes some evidence that the three hormones affect the processing of disgust and their neurophysiological mechanism and predicts future research direction.
Oxytocin is synthesized in the hypothalamus and is widely involved in social cognition and social behaviors, such as attachment. Studies have proved that oxytocin affects the generation and acquisition of disgust based on olfaction and taste, and recognition of disgust expression by regulating the activities of several brain regions such as insula, anterior cingulate gyrus, amygdala, piriform cortex, putamen, and middle frontal gyrus. Among them, oxytocin may participate in disgust learning by modulating the activity of serotonin receptors.
According to the compensatory prophylaxis hypothesis supported by quantities of animal and human researches, progesterone promotes the individuals' sensitivity of disgust to potentially infectious stimuli, thereby producing avoidance behaviors to reduce the risk of infection. At the same time, progesterone also affects the recognition of disgust expressions, but has no significant effect on the disgust learning of rodents. And amygdala activity is the main brain area affecting the processing of disgust and can be both promoted and inhibited by progesterone in the processing of disgust. Estrogens also play regulatory roles in perception and acquisition of disgust and recognition of facial expression of disgust. The amygdala and the anterior cingulate gyrus may also be the neural substrates that progesterone affects the processing of disgust, but further research will be necessary before we can draw firm conclusions.
It is noteworthy that oxytocin, progesterone and estrogens affect the generation and expression of pathogen disgust to varying degrees, except for moral disgust. This may be because pathogen disgust is more closely related to hormones than moral disgust which has a higher cognitive component, and its physiological basis is more evident in evolution. However, this may be due to current questionnaires used to measure moral disgust making the measurement indicators insensitive enough, which causes no significant effects of the three hormones on moral disgust.
In short, most of the current studies in this field are still confined to describe phenomena and doing correlational research, but know little about its internal mechanisms. Besides, there are still many contradictions in results. Future studies should explore the effects of these hormones on disgust in different sensory channels and consider their moderating roles in different genders by accurately measuring hormone levels and controlling the task difficulties. In addition, researchers can combine neuroimaging technologies with behavioral studies to clarify the neuroendocrine mechanism of these hormones affecting disgust processing.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder with complex etiologies that usually occurs after people are exposed to traumatic events. In the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the criteria for PTSD included symptoms of intrusion, avoidance, negative alterations in cognitions and mood, and alterations in arousal and reactivity. The World Mental Health Surveys on Trauma and PTSD showed that more than 70% of individuals would experience traumatic events at least once in lifetime, while only a few would develop PTSD, suggesting individual differences in the genesis and development of PTSD.
Previous studies have proved that both genetic and environmental factors could influence the risk of PTSD, thus epigenetics, as a discipline investigating the interaction between environment and genes, has attracted the attention of researchers. Among the epigenetic mechanisms, histone modification has received widespread attention and has been researched in depth. Modification of histones by adding one or more chemical groups (such as acetyl group, methyl group, etc.) can lead to changes in chromatin structure and gene transcriptional activity, consequently regulating the level of gene expression. In recent years, histone modification has been implicated as an essential part in the pathogenesis of PTSD for the following reason: the development of PTSD is usually related to the maladaptation of fear memory induced by traumatic events, and histone modification plays an important role in the consolidation and extinction of fear memory correspondingly.
At present, techniques commonly used for the measurement of histone modification are Western Blotting and chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), both based on the antibody technology. By combining ChIP with quantitative PCR (qPCR) technology, DNA microarray (also known as gene chip) technology or deep sequencing (Seq) technology, researchers can study the relationship between various types of histone modification and gene expression. What's more, animal models are the main methods to explore the association between histone modification and PTSD, using electric shocks (e.g., inescapable foot shock, tail shock, and tone shock), social stress (e.g., predator exposure), and single prolonged stress (SPS) to simulate symptoms of PTSD in the laboratory.
We systematically searched and screened the literatures of histone modification in PTSD through PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/), PsychINFO (http://psycnet.apa.org/), and PsychArticles (http://psycnet.apa.org/), with finally 16 literatures selected for detailed integration and discussion. In spite of the nonnegligible heterogeneity among these studies, they proved the overall effect of histone modification was closely associated with the development of PTSD. Histone modification that enriched in the promoter regions of candidate genes like the Bdnf and Cdk5, could significantly increase the risk of PTSD. Alterations in levels of histone acetylation and methylation in hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex are associated with PTSD, playing key roles in the consolidation, reconsolidation, and extinction of fear memory in PTSD-like animals. It is worth noting that histone modification is mainly involved in the regulation of the immune system, the serotonergic system, the neuropeptide Y-ergic system, and the NMDA receptor-related pathways. In addition, histone modification can be regulated by a variety of enzymes, leading to flexible regulation of PTSD, making drugs that target histone modification good choices for clinical treatment of PTSD.
Studying the neurobiological mechanisms of PTSD in human patients has been blocked by many factors; moreover, applying the results of animal models of PTSD to clinical research is a long way off. Therefore, using animal models to investigate the role of histone modification in the etiology of PTSD will remain a mainstream approach for some time to come.

Aerobic exercise is the rhythmic and continuous use of large muscle groups with sufficient oxygen supply. The aim of this review is to summarize previous research regarding the effects of aerobic exercise on working memory, episodic memory and implicit memory, and moderators among the relationships, such as timing of aerobic exercise, aerobic exercise duration, aerobic exercise intensity, cognitive engagement of aerobic exercise, age and gender. The following databases were used for the computerized searches: CNKI, Web of Science and PubMed. Aerobic exercise can improve processing speed in working memory tasks, denoted by both reaction time and event related potential. Moderate to vigorous intensity aerobic exercise before memory encoding or during consolidation can enhance episodic memory. Vigorous intensity aerobic exercise can promote implicit memory.
As for the moderators, a) timing of aerobic exercise has similar effects on the three types of memory. Aerobic exercise before memory encoding can promote all three types of memory (One study for working memory (Budde et al., 2010), one study for implicit memory (Angulo-Barroso et al., 2019), and for episodic memory in a previous meta-analysis, d = 0.11, 95% CI [-0.01, 0.23] (Loprinzi, Blough, et al., 2019)). Aerobic exercise during memory encoding can damage working memory (2 out of 3 studies have showed significant damaging effect (Loprinzi, 2018)) and episodic memory (d = -0.12, 95% CI [-0.22, -0.02] (Loprinzi, Blough, et al., 2019)), especially for vigorous intensity. Few studies have explored the effect of aerobic exercise during implicit memory encoding. Aerobic exercise during memory consolidation can promote episodic memory (d = 0.47, 95% CI [0.28, 0.67] (Loprinzi, Blough, et al., 2019)) and implicit memory (in one experimental study (Lundbye-Jensen et al., 2017)). b) Research synthesis indicates that chronic aerobic exercise is beneficial to working memory and episodic memory, while acute aerobic exercise has no significant effect. Yet, no study has directly compared the effects of acute and long-term aerobic exercise on implicit memory. c) Emerging research suggests that aerobic exercise intensity has different effect on the three kinds of memory. Moderate intensity aerobic exercise has positive effect on working memory. Vigorous intensity aerobic exercise can improve episodic memory and implicit memory. However, vigorous intensity aerobic exercise can negatively impacts working memory, which may lead to fatigue or interference, but this negative effect may be attenuated if the post-exercise recovery period is sufficient. d) Open skill aerobic exercise is performed in a dynamic and changing environment and require more cognitive engagement, such as football and basketball, while closed skill aerobic exercise take place in a predictable and static environment, requiring less cognitive engagement, such as rope skipping and stair climbing. The cognitive engagement of aerobic exercise may have positive effect on memory. e) The interactions are complex and several other moderators, such as types of memory (item memory and source memory), emotional characteristics of the learning materials, gender and age, should be carefully considered.
Next, we review the neurobiological mechanism underlying the effect of aerobic exercise on memory from the aspects of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and hippocampus. Animal studies generally show that BDNF is the mediator of the relationships between aerobic exercise and memory. However, the results of human research remain controversial. The change of BDNF lasts for only a few hours, thus it is easier to observe the increase of BDNF when sampling immediately after aerobic exercise. Specific gene affects the expression of BDNF. As for Val/Met heterozygous carriers, although aerobic exercise can negatively impact the episodic memory, studies have found that increasing aerobic exercise intensity can offset the adverse effects of Val/Met gene on working memory. Future research can focus on how aerobic exercise can improve the memory of Val/Met heterozygous carriers. Aerobic exercise can also cause long-term potentiation, activate hippocampus and other memory related brain areas, and induce neurogenesis. Future research can also test the laterality of fMRI activation to infer whether aerobic exercise can maintain the health of specific brain areas vulnerable to aging.
In conclusion, Future research should focus on the moderating effects of memory types, aerobic exercise timing and duration, aerobic exercise intensity and cognitive engagement, as well as age and gender, and explore the mediating role of BDNF and other molecular mechanisms (e.g., the endocannabinoid system) in human experiments, so as to reveal the neurobiological mechanism underlying the impact of aerobic exercise on memory.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a kind of neurodevelopmental disorder that presents in childhood. Attentional disengagement is an essential part of the attentional orientation network. It refers to the process of disengaging attention from the original object to another one during an attention shift. In early childhood, the ability to engage and disengage attention is necessary for the development of social communication. Atypical patterns of disengagement may have adverse implications for emotional regulation, orienting, joint attention, and other abilities directly associated with socio-emotional functioning. The attentional disengagement suggests holds that early impairment of the attentional disengagement in ASD could substantially affect the development of the perception and cognitive capacity, which could then ultimately escalate into a number of impairments within the core clinical symptoms of ASD.
Many studies have shown that high-risk infants (high-risk by virtue of having an older sibling diagnosed with ASD) who are later diagnosed with ASD have impairments in attentional disengagement at an early age, and some researchers believe that attentional disengagement deficits are an early behavioral marker for the diagnosis of autism in the future. Therefore, investigating the developmental characteristics and cognitive neural mechanisms of attentional disengagement in ASD individuals has practical significance for exploring the etiology, early diagnosis, and intervention of ASD. However, studies using the gap-overlap paradigm resulted in controversial findings regarding the abnormal attentional disengagement ability in individuals with ASD. Longitudinal studies of early high-risk infants had shown that individuals with ASD exhibited difficulty in attentional disengagement before being diagnosed. The ability of attentional disengagement in infancy could predict the development of ASD later in life. The more difficult the attentional disengagement, the more likely the development of ASD. Studies of older children, adolescents, and adults with ASD had yielded mixed results. Studies found slower, faster, and no group differences in the latency of attentional disengagement in individuals with ASD compared to those in the control groups. These inconsistent results may indicate that the attentional disengagement hypothesis cannot fully explain the development of attentional disengagement in ASD. Impairments in attentional disengagement for individuals with ASD may not emerge in the first year of life and may not continue into adulthood.
This review summarizes the controversial research on the attentional disengagement of individuals with ASD in gap-overlap tasks and its relationship with the clinical symptoms of ASD. It is possible that the participants' characteristics, the research methods, and the stimulus properties are the main factors affecting attentional disengagement. This neural mechanism may involve the oculomotor nervous system, the frontal lobe, the parietal lobe, the cerebellum, and the corpus callosum. Additionally, based on previous studies, this paper proposes several possible trajectories for the development of attentional disengagement in individuals with ASD, that enrich the theoretical research in ASD. Finally, the future research directions of attentional disengagement in ASD are prospected.
The evidence of inconsistent results in attentional disengagement in ASD individuals also underscores the importance of future research aimed at establishing whether there is an ASD-specific disengagement impairment. Future research should focus on research of brain mechanisms to map the trajectory of attentional disengagement in ASD over time. It is not only necessary to conduct a prospective longitudinal study on high-risk infants with ASD but also to consider the effects of participant characteristics, the heterogeneity of ASD, stimulus properties, and variability of measurement indexes and research methods on the results of attentional disengagement comprehensively, as well as further clarify its role in the early prediction and recognition of autism. Furthermore, other behavioral manifestations or early risk markers should be combined for comprehensive diagnosis and identification, so as to develop targeted early intervention strategies and programs for high-risk infants.

Telepsychology service can allow experienced psychological service providers to quickly shift their attention to the places that need them most at any time. As an example, for the mental health problems during the current COVID-19 pandemic, telepsychology service enables psychiatrists to offer immediate help, and to improve the efficiency of psychological service. China's telepsychology service has been in its early times until the COVID-19 pandemic that enforces self-quarantine for the majority of the population. In this process, two key problems have also been exposed: first, without standard norms, there is only some consensus in the industry put forward by the psychological community to refer to, which has limited authority and binding force; Second, most of the telepsychology providers in China are not professionally trained, and the traditional face-to-face intervention technology obviously cannot be conducted to provides distance service. After combing the previous telepsychology service research, we found that counselors, treatment methods and remote service methodologies are the three most important factors in the development of telepsychology service. We then creatively established a visitor-centered telepsychology service application model, which emphasizes the comprehensive role of counselors, treatment methods and remote service methodologies in telepsychology service. When visitors request telepsychology services, the interaction between factors and the interaction between factors and visitors affect the therapeutic effect of telepsychology services. Artificial intelligence also plays an important role in improving telepsychology service. It can be utilized in providing remote mental health assistance, participating in face-to-face treatment, assisting counselors in remote intervention, etc. All applied artificial intelligence techniques are combined with different telepsychology service situations, to continuously optimize the psychological service process and improve the quality of psychological service. At present, the advantages of telepsychology service are reflected in three aspects: effectiveness, convenience, and economy. Firstly, the intervention of telepsychology service on mental health problems is practical and effective, and the treatment quality is equivalent to the traditional face-to-face mental health service. For psychological practitioners who live in remote areas and engage in psychological counseling, the convenience of telepsychology services has brought solutions to their concerns of counseling and visiting relationship. Compared with traditional face-to-face psychological counseling, it is easier for visitors, psychological service staff and psychological counselors in telepsychology service to coordinate. When formulating the psychological counseling program, the place and time that visitors can make an appointment are more flexible, which can improve the efficiency of psychological counseling and reduce the waiting time. However, there are still challenges in three aspects: acceptance, privacy, and adaptability. Psychological service providers' acceptance of telepsychology service depends on their understanding of its effectiveness, flexibility and convenience and their expectation of service quality. At the same time, privacy security is also a concern that telepsychology services need to pay attention to. Consulting institutions need to establish protection protocols for customers' privacy and remind them to pay attention to their privacy in an eye-catching position on the home page of the institutions' website. With the gradual promotion of 5G technology, the key methodology of mental health care in the future are likely to include video conferencing, intelligent mobile devices, cloud computing, etc. This emerging technology provides unlimited development prospects for limited mental health services.

The application of artificial intelligence and big data mining technology in the field of mental health has promoted the development of intelligent mental health assessment. Intelligent mental health assessment entails the application of artificial intelligence technology in acquiring and analyzing data and modeling the relationship between behavioral features and mental health problems. Intelligent mental health assessment has broadened the forms of data and the analysis methods of traditional mental health assessment, enabling researchers to obtain multi-modal data based on more simulated situations and achieve more efficient and accurate assessments.
At present, researchers mainly carry out mental health assessments based on social media data, smart device data, video game data, and wearable device data to explore various features related to mental health and build predictive models. Social media data mainly refer to the text content posted by users on social media, which is widely used in psychological assessment. Researchers have explored text features related to mental health. Foreign researchers mainly predict users' mental health conditions based on the contents posted on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Domestic researchers mostly rely on Weibo and other platforms to conduct related research. Smartphones and other devices record individual daily behavioral data, including application software use, communication, location movement (based on GPS), etc. These behavioral data provided effective information for predicting the psychological characteristics of individuals. Besides, with the widespread use of smartphones and other mobile devices, collecting audio and video data has become more convenient. Researchers can extract features such as actions, voices, and expressions to achieve an immediate and automatic evaluation of participants' mental health. Video game data refers to the log data of the player during the game. It contains a wealth of behavioral performance information of the individual in the virtual environment. Researchers can evaluate the individual's abilities and psychological characteristics based on the data. Game-based assessment is mainly used to assess individual abilities and cognitive impairment. However, there are few studies on mental health assessment based on games, only some assessments of the positive personality. Mental health problems are often accompanied by obvious physiological reactions. Researchers use wearable devices to collect physiological indicators such as brain electricity, eye movements, heart rate, and skin temperature for mental health monitoring. Researchers use EEG data and eye movement data to identify mental health problems related to emotions and attention. Indicators of skin temperature and heart rate reflect the individual's mood and stress state and therefore have the potential to predict the level of individual mental health.
The future research directions of intelligent mental health assessment mainly include five aspects. First, previous research on intelligent mental health assessment has often used data-driven methods to explore features and construct predicting models, which is hard to explain the complex relationship between behavioral indicators and latent mental health state. Therefore, further improvement of pertinence and refinement is demanded. Researchers should design tasks based on psychological theories, carry out meaningful feature extraction, and gradually refine from rough dichotomous diagnosis to continuous and typed diagnosis. Second, unsupervised data mining is difficult to ensure the validity and interpretability of assessment. To carry out effective assessment and reduce errors in the new simulated environment, the task design of intelligent mental health assessment should be designed based on the evidence center. Third, the current intelligent mental health assessment mainly uses the indicators in the computer field, and the relevant research considering the reliability and validity is very rare. Researchers should select prediction models based on specific tasks and test the generalization and stability of prediction models in different datasets and scenarios. Fourth, different data sources and features have unique advantages. Researchers could obtain multi-modal data for modeling and analysis with the application of the advanced technology of artificial intelligence. Finally, privacy protection and ethical issues are essential for intelligent mental health assessment. Subjects should be notified before data acquisition and use.

Moral injury refers to the long-lasting psychological, biological, spiritual, behavioral and social impact on an individual after the exposure to morally injurious events, which entail “perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations” (Litz et al., 2009). Since Litz et al. (2009) redefined this concept from the perspective of psychology, moral injury has attracted extensive attention in the fields of psychology, ethics, psychiatry, and sociology. The present article reviews and summarizes the concept, relevant mechanisms, measurements, and interventions of moral injury and offer recommendations for future research. We first review the background of moral injury. Moral injury can be traced back to survivor guilt, which has long been regarded as one of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. However, Litz et al.(2009) pointed out that moral injury and post-traumatic stress disorder are two different concepts, and Shay(2014) listed the five differences between moral injury and post-traumatic stress disorder in detail. Next, we review the mechanisms of moral injury. Under the influence of individual and social factors, potentially morally injurious events that severely violate an individual's moral code can lead to cognitive dissonance and intrapsychic conflict, and eventually produce lasting shame, guilt, and anxiety. In addition, different types of potentially morally injurious events may lead to different types of moral injury, but the specific mechanism is still unclear. Self-oriented events (e.g., committing a crime, failing to prevent a crime, etc.) are more likely to result in negative internal emotions and cognitions (e.g., guilt, shame, inability to forgive oneself), whereas other-oriented events (e.g., witnessing an act of violence, betrayal by a trusted person) are more likely to lead to negative external emotions and cognitions (e.g., anger, loss of trust, inability to forgive).Third, we summarizes the existing moral injury scales, with a focus on the scope of application and each scale's advantages and disadvantages. These scales can be divided into two categories according to their contents, with one group assessing moral injury symptoms alone, and another assessing both the moral injury events and symptoms. Researchers or clinicians can choose these scales according to their practical needs. Moreover, current interventions for moral injury include Cognitive Behavior Therapy, CBT-based Adaptive Disclosure Therapy, CPT-based Spiritually Integrated Cognitive Processing Therapy, etc. While being commonly used in the treatment of PTSD, those therapies are equally effective in treating the core symptoms of moral injury. We concluded this article with limitations of existing research and suggestions for future research. Moral injury events and moral injury outcomes need to be further distinguished, moral injury mechanisms need to be further studied, and the diagnostic criteria of moral injury need to be established. Researchers also need to pay attention to the differences of moral standards in different cultures, expand research on moral injury to more groups, and widen the application of research on moral injury.

Visual perspective taking indicates that people understand whether others can see an object or what they have seen. In visual perspective taking, people see things from others' perspectives. Visual perspective taking is the foundation of cognitive development and also the starting point and premise of social interaction. However, ones' information usually interferes with others' perspectives. As a result, people who take others' perspectives would use their perspectives to understand others. This will result in biases in visual perspective taking. These biases are usually induced by ones' information, which is known as the egocentric bias. Egocentric bias plays an important role in unsuccessful social interaction. However, its inner mechanisms are still under debate. Specifically, the inhibitive selection model and fluency misattribution theory hold different statements on the emergence of the egocentric bias. The inhibitive selection model holds that when understanding others' perspectives, participants need to inhibit their perspectives and deal with the conflicts between their perspectives and others' perspectives. This inhibitive selection is related to the executive function, especially the inhibitory control. The fluency misattribution theory holds that when understanding others' perspectives, people tend to erroneously attribute their perspectives to others' perspectives, as their perspectives are more fluency in their minds. These two theories focus on different processes of visual perspective taking and then construct completely different theoretical approaches. The inhibitive selection model mainly focuses on the information inhibition process in the egocentric bias while ignores the information extraction and integration processes. On the contrary, the fluency misattribution theory focuses on the influence of extracting and integrating misinformation in the egocentric bias while ignores the influence of the information inhibition process. Therefore, this divergence in their theoretical approaches also suggests that the above-mentioned theories may not fully reveal the mechanisms of the egocentric bias. The present review will try to integrate the debates between the inhibitive selection model and fluency misattribution theory. Specifically, we first review the paradigms of the level-1 and level-2 visual perspective taking according to the processing level and complexity of visual perspective taking to examine the mechanisms of the egocentric bias. We found that the level-1 visual perspective taking is usually measured by the dot-probe paradigm. The level-2 visual perspective taking is usually measured by the own-body transformation task, director task, and ambiguous number paradigm. Then, we examine what factors may affect inhibitive selection and misattribution to find what factors may affect the egocentric bias. Furthermore, the inhibition-attribution collaboration model is proposed for the first time to bridge the gap between the inhibitive selection model and fluency misattribution theory. The inhibition-attribution collaboration model hypothesizes that the inhibitive selection model, which emphasizes the inhibitory process, and the fluency misattribution theory, which emphasizes the integration process, may not be mutually exclusive. These processes may jointly result in egocentric bias. Specifically, when taking others' perspectives with high uncertainty, people have difficulty in inferring others' views and perspectives correctly. In this case, the inhibitive selection model and fluency misattribution may result in egocentric bias through three processing pathways. Future studies should further test this model using the sophisticated paradigms on special groups of participants to explore how to improve social interaction by reducing egocentric bias.

The Emotions as Social Information (EASI) model posits that emotional expressions exert interpersonal effects by triggering affective reactions and/or inferential processes in observers, depending on the observer's information processing and the perceived appropriateness of the emotional expression. Since the EASI model was proposed, it has attracted extensive attention from researchers. Unfortunately, as a rising theory in recent ten years, the EASI model is still less studied in China. What are the unique theoretical contributions of the EASI model compared with other emotion theories? What progress has the EASI model made in recent ten years? What problems have been solved in various fields by using the EASI model? What other issues about the EASI model deserve further attention? To answer the above research questions, this paper discriminates the EASI model with other related theories, such as feelings-as-information theory, the dual-process model, the dual threshold model of anger, emotional contagion theory and affective event theory, to clarify the unique contributions of the EASI model in explaining emotion and related phenomena. Then, we searched and screened the empirical papers which clearly stated that they are based on the EASI model on Google Scholar, and found 63 papers in total. We review the application of the EASI model in the fields of leadership, team, customer service, negotiation and persuasion, and summarize the factors influencing the boundary conditions of the EASI model—the degree of information processing and perceived appropriateness based on the analysis of the 63 empirical papers using the EASI model. Overall, the inferential processes and affective reactions mechanism of the EASI model have been extensively verified in various fields. Among them, there are 33 studies in the field of leadership, 9 studies in the field of teamwork, 8 studies in the field of customer service, 8 studies in the field of negotiation, and 5 studies in the field of persuasion. There are mainly three factors influencing the degree of information processing: epistemic motivation (e.g., need for cognitive closure, personal need for structure, cognitive load), observer's personality (e.g., implicit personality theory, conscientiousness, moral orientation, regulatory orientation, proactive personality) and employee's efficiency. There are mainly four factors influencing perceived appropriateness: situational factors (e.g., emotional expression rules, culture, the relationship between the expressor and the observer), emotional expression content (e.g., intensity of the expression, authenticity of the expression , the target of the expression), expressor's characteristics (e.g., leadership style, gender, race, power, status) and observer's characteristics (e.g., agreeableness, regulatory orientation, power distance orientation, perceived leadership power). Based on the EASI model, we further integrate the existing research findings of the content structure, mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions of the social function of emotions into an integrated framework. Following our review, we identify avenues for future investigations. Future research should (1) strengthen the systematic verification of the EASI model, such as investigate both of the inferential processes and affective reactions as well as the observer's information processing and perceived appropriateness at the same time, consider both of the reciprocal emotions and complementary emotions when investigate observer's affective reactions; (2) enhance the integration of the EASI model with other theories (e.g., the dual threshold model of anger, emotion regulation theory, the adapted elaboration likelihood model); (3) extend the application context of the EASI model, specifically, future study can explore the mixed emotional expressions of one individual in multiple natural interaction situations, investigate the effect when the observer perceives different emotional expressions from different individuals at the same time, explore the possible effect when the observer perceives multiple emotional expressions changes of the same individual on related events at different time points, track the long-term social effect of emotional expressions, and explore the bystander effect of emotional expressions and the application of EASI in new organizational contexts; and (4) improve the measurement methods of inferential processes and affective reactions.

As an important form of employee engagement in organizational decision-making, voice has an unignorable influence on employees themselves, managers and organizations. Since Hirschman raised the concept of voice, scholars have contributed to exploring the antecedents and consequences of employee voice, managerial evaluation and endorsement, as well as voice solicitation. Moreover, accumulating attention has been paid to the managerial roles in promoting employee voice and amplifying the positive effects of voice. However, research on managerial roles in voice remains unsystematic and leaves lots of issues to be addressed.
Based on Input-Process-Output (IPO) model, we summarize managerial roles in the voice process, as well as their premises and outcomes. At first, we integrate voice solicitation, employee voice, and managers' reactions toward voice (i.e., managerial endorsement and voice/voicer evaluation) into a comprehensive concept, entitled as voice behavior chain. Voice behavior chain reflects the Process component of the IPO model and portraits managerial roles in the voice contexts. In the voice behavior chain, as initiators, managers consult employees about their work-related ideas and opinions, which can facilitate employee voice. Then, as reactors, managers would decide whether to endorse employee voice or not, and meanwhile, they also evaluate voice and corresponding voicers. However, it is notable that voice behavior chain could be incomplete; that is, except for employee voice, neither of the managerial roles is a must to constitute the chain. The order of the elements within the behavior chain may also change under certain circumstances. Moreover, we provide fine-grained arguments about the distinctiveness and connections between voice solicitation and employee voice and between managerial endorsement and voice/voicer evaluation.
We also conclude that in the IPO model, voice behavior chain shares similar Input and Output components (i.e., similar antecedents and consequences), which are across individual-level, team-level and organizational-level. Regarding the Input component, managers' affective states, openness toward change, motivations, self-regulatory resources, self-efficacy, and face threat directly influence their performance in voice behavior chain. Managerial endorsement and evaluation also depend on employees' communication skills, credibility and expertise. Team-level (e.g., power distance, leader-member exchange, goal consistency and the involvement of third party) and organizational-level factors (e.g., change climate and voice norms) can also activate voice behavior chain. Since researchers tend to adopt self-regulatory theory or image/ego threat theory to trace the sources of voice behavior chain, we call for further studies to consider other potential theoretical explanations and input factors, such as managers' attributions. Regarding the Output component, voice behavior chain may have effects on individual perceived organizational support, organizational commitment, performance and promotion. It also serves as a catalyze to promote team performance and problem-solving skills and to build organizational creative climate. However, the managerial roles cannot be limited in strengthening the effects of employee voice. For instance, managerial solicitation may induce managers' emotional exhaustion if their proactive behaviors aren't followed by employee voice and support.
Drawing on the IPO model in the voice context, we emphasize the managerial roles in voice behavior chain. Thereby this study comprehensively incorporates the existing literature, identifies important issues neglected by previous research and sheds light on future studies. Researchers need to be more scrupulous of the application of the related theory when conducting cross-cultural research. Also, the constructs and dimensions of the behavior elements can be explored furtherly, and we are looking forward to more objective measurements of managerial roles. Last but not least, the research on managerial roles in voice behavior chain can be enriched by investigating spillover effects and corresponding mechanisms. We hope this review can make theoretical and practical contributions by integrating those scattered topics and guiding managers to facilitate and respond to employee voice efficiently.

Most research on the relationship between supervisors and subordinates focuses on the actual characteristics of the relationship but lacks discussion on the implicit characteristics or patterns of the relationship. In contrast, the supervisor-subordinate relational schema focuses on the implicit cognition of the supervisor-subordinate relationship. This relational schema helps reveal the interaction process between supervisor and subordinate and advances theory in this area, providing theoretical guidance on how to promote supervisors' and subordinates' positive psychology and behaviors. Based on a systematic review of the literature, this paper defines the supervisor-subordinate relational schema as an individual's implicit cognition of the pattern or characteristics of the relationship between supervisors and subordinates. This cognitive structure can serve as role expectations and evaluative standards to assess the quality of supervisor-subordinate relationships consciously or unconsciously and as an interactive guide for individual behavior. In addition, this paper lists the measurement of the supervisor-subordinate relational schema and distinguishes the supervisor-subordinate relational schema from the related concepts. Both the supervisor-subordinate relational schema and the implicit theories of relationships belong to the domain-specific relational schemas, but the supervisor-subordinate relational schema focuses on the supervisor-subordinate relationship, while the implicit theories of relationships focus on the romantic relationship. The followership schema and the supervisor-subordinate relational schema are both schema structures. However, the cognitive object of the followership schema is followers (individual-level), while the cognitive object of the supervisor-subordinate relational schema is the supervisor-subordinate relationship (dyad-level). Relational self, relational identity, and the supervisor-subordinate relational schema all relate to relational cognition, but the definition objects are quite different. Relational self and relational identity define "Self" by relational cognition, while the supervisor-subordinate relational schema defines "Relationship." Individual traditionality and modernity, attachment style, leadership behavior, and cultural factors can predict the supervisor-subordinate relational schema. This relational schema can influence a leader's attitude and behavior and subordinates' loyalty, job performance, extra-role behavior, leader evaluation (ethical leadership), and supervisor-subordinate relationship evaluation. Meanwhile, the social-cognitive model of transference, pan familism, social learning theory can explain the antecedent influence to the supervisor-subordinate relational schema. Information processing theory is the leading theory to explain the consequences of the supervisor-subordinate relational schema. Future research is encouraged to identify the predictive factors of the supervisor-subordinate relational schema, expand its consequences, and explore its mediating mechanism.

Although research has revealed that work and family can benefit each other (Casper et al., 2018), most companies still hold the belief that family matters often undermine individuals' abilities to perform their jobs. This belief is based on the notion of “work devotion schema,” which represents a traditional assumption that employees should give priority to their work ahead of other life pursuits (Bourdeau et al., 2018). According to this schema, “ideal workers” are those who are willing to work long hours and do whatever their work demands. In contrast, people who experience work-family conflict are assumed to be preoccupied by family matters and thus as failing to meet the requirements of the ideal employee according to the work devotion schema. As a result, managers are likely to provide fewer job opportunities to these people. It is implied that others at work are very likely to interpret work-family conflict as an indicator of what kind of person the employee is and to interact with him/her accordingly. Therefore, work-family conflict may not only represent a personal experience but also have interpersonal implications in the workplace.
Several studies have tested the antecedents and consequences of others' perceptions of work-family conflict. For instance, Hoobler et al. (2009) showed that managers expected female employees to have higher levels of family-to-work conflict and considered this to make them less well matched to their jobs, thus providing them with fewer opportunities. Moreover, Li et al. (2017) found that supervisor perceptions of work-family conflict were negatively related to employees' performance ratings. However, the research into others' perceptions of work-family conflict remains in its early stages.
Therefore, by integrating the literature on work-family conflict with that on stereotyping, this study builds an integrative model outlining how others at work (i.e., supervisors and coworkers) form perceptions of an employee's work-family conflict, and how these perceptions influence his/her workplace outcomes. Specifically, drawing on theories of stereotyping (Cuddy et al., 2009), we propose that employees' family characteristics (i.e., marital status, number of children, and caring for elders) may increase others' perceptions of family-to-work conflict (FWC), whereas employees' work characteristics (i.e., work time, workload, and work autonomy) may increase others' perceptions of work-to-family conflict (WFC). We also identify the boundary conditions of these relationships by proposing the moderating roles of the focal employee's gender and the perceiver's gender egalitarianism.
Moreover, building on the stereotype content model and the warmth-competence framework (Fiske et al., 2002), we delineate the interpersonal consequences of work-family conflict—that is, how others view and react to an employees' work-family conflict. We propose that others' perceptions of an employee's work-family conflict can influence their perceptions of the employee's competence and warmth. Employees who are perceived to have FWC will tend to be viewed as less competent, whereas those who are perceived to have WFC will tend to be viewed as less warm. Likewise, we propose the moderating roles of the focal employee's gender and the perceiver's gender egalitarianism in the relationships between perceptions of FWC/WFC and perceptions of competence/warmth. Finally, we extend the theoretical model by proposing leadership emergence and workplace ostracism as behavioral consequences of perceptions of competence, and supportive behavior and approach aggression behavior as behavioral consequences of perceptions of warmth.
This study makes several contributions to the literature on work-family conflict. Theoretically, it opens a new avenue for research on work-family conflict by exploring its interpersonal mechanisms and by teasing out the antecedents of others' perceptions of work-family conflict and the consequences of these perceptions. This study also advances our understanding of social perceptions in the workplace by positing that work-family conflict can serve as an important signal about an employee, to which supervisors and coworkers react accordingly. Practically, as with many stereotypes that affect workplace decisions, this study provides important implications for managers and coworkers to be aware of their own biases. Managers and coworkers should ensure that biased perceptions of work-family conflict do not affect their interpersonal behavior with other employees, as the elimination of such bias will help to create a more just and favorable working environment.